1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a lens barrel and an image capturing apparatus.
The present application claims priority from Japanese Patent Applications No. 2009-41396 and 2009-41398 filed on Feb. 24, 2009, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-089086 discloses a configuration of an internal focusing zoom lens barrel in which a plurality of lenses move individually via a cam mechanism to change focal position and focal distance. Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 5-142475 discloses a lens, from among the lenses of a zoom lens, that moves in the direction of the optical axis in response to a scaling operation and rotates in response to a focusing operation.
However, this requires a complicated configuration with many components and there are many steps to the assembly, and is therefore unsuitable for mass production. Furthermore, the ability of the lens barrel is greatly impacted by the accuracy of the components, the precision of the assembly, and the like, which means that improving the ability of the lens barrel incurs a high cost. Yet further, when a configuration is adopted in which holding frames that hold the lenses in the zoom lens move while engaged with guide axles, there is a mechanical limitation that these holding frames cannot be rotated by the focusing operation.